sunday scribblings

#98 - Sleep

As I lay in bed this morning with my husband's arm across my neck and chest, I thought about one other man I enjoyed sharing my bed with: my brother.

He was a long, lanky thing with Clint Eastwood arms that could wrap around me twice. Although I remember lugging him around on my hip, I can also remember his picking me up and twirling me or my sister around as if either of us weighed nothing.

I don't know when the tradition started, but I remember the three of us snuggling up in the same bed every Christmas eve for most of our years. I would have to sleep in the middle because both of them were too hot natured to endure the oven. I would also be the first one awake, but I enjoyed just lying there with my siblings thinking about all that would transpire in the next few hours: the gifts, the oohs and ahhs, the hugs and kisses, the trip to the grandmothers' houses.

The last Christmas eve we all spent together must have been his 18th. He was in the Marine Corps brig at Quantico for his 19th and offshore for his 20th. He didn't make it to his 21st. Sometimes I still dream that he is here - throwing me around on the carpet, asking me to make him chocolate milk or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, watching Dazed and Confused again for the hundredth time. And then I wake up and have to register the fact that he is gone all over.

Sleep doesn't quite hold the respite for me that it once did, but I can still remember those nights when all was right in the world and a girl had her baby brother.

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